Visual Monitoring of Driver Inattention

Bergasa, Luis M.; Nuevo, Jesús; Sotelo, Miguel Ángel; Barea, Rafael; López, Elena; Year: 2008; Type of Publication: In Collection; Book title: Computational Intelligence in Automotive Applications; Publisher: Springer Berlin / Heidelberg; Editor: Prokhorov, Danil; Pages: 25-51; ISBN: 978-3-540-79256-7; Note: 10.1007/978-3-540-79257-4_2
Abstract:: The increasing number of traffic accidents due to driver inattention has become a serious problem for society. Every year, about 45,000 people die and 1.5 million people are injured in traffic accidents in Europe. These figures imply that one person out of every 200 European citizens is injured in a traffic accident every year and that around one out 80 European citizens dies 40 years short of the life expectancy. It is known that the great majority of road accidents (about 90-95%) are caused by human error. More recent data has identified inattention (including distraction and falling asleep at the wheel) as the primary cause of accidents, accounting for at least 25% of the crashes [15]. Road safety is thus a major European health problem. In the âWhite Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010â, the European Commission declares the ambitious objective of reducing by 50% the number of fatal accidents on European roads by 2010 (European Commission, 2001).